Like Riding a Bike
by L.M.Lewis
Summary: A horse is a horse, of course...


Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to me, and I make no profit from them.

**Author's Note: **One of the high points (yes, you heard me right) in "Whistler's Pride" is the only horse vs. truck chase scene in all of the canon. It's done to the William Tell Overture, no less—a moment of inspired soundtrack insanity.

**Like Riding a Bike**

by L.M. Lewis

In the end, Hardcastle had offered to haul the trailer and Whistler's Pride up to Casey's folks' place near Wheatland. It turned into a convoy, with Casey tagging along behind them in her rusty Chevy Vega. Mark had concluded it had just about the right amount of pick up to keep up with the pick-up.

And at their combined pace it had been a long day, for men, woman, and beast. By the time they'd offloaded the horse, unhitched the trailer, and paid a courtesy visit in the O'Bannions' parlor, it was close to sundown.

Finally back in the truck, and pulling up onto the highway, he heard the judge issue a sigh of what sounded like relief.

"'The Sport of Kings' wasn't all it's cracked up to be, huh?" Mark asked politely.

"Well, at least you can't say it was _dull_," Hardcastle retorted.

Mark had to give that assessment a nod as he peered out into the gathering gloom.

"You know it took us eight hours coming up. You planning on doing a straight drive back? If you are, I think you oughta hand over the reins for a while."

"Nah, figured we'd pulling at Stockton, maybe. Hole up for the night." The judge shifted a little and added. "A guy can only sit for so many hours straight."

"You got that right." Mark yawned. Even the short break for leg stretching at the O'Bannion place hadn't been enough to get the kinks out. He slumped down a bit in his seat and crossed his arms, watching another mile marker flash by and then a sign for a feed and grain store, reminding him they were still up in ranch country.

From there, his mind wandered back, just slightly—trucks and horses, horses and trucks. He shot a look sideward at Hardcastle, staring steadily out at the highway.

"The thing with the horse and the truck, now _that_ was kinda crazy."

The judge had raised one eyebrow but didn't look away from the road.

"I mean, how fast can a horse go?"

"A quarter horse? Oh, 'bout forty miles an hour," Hardcastle said casually. "'Course that'd be over the short haul and not with a guy my size up on its back. But you figure over uneven ground, a truck's not going to do much better than that without breakin' a strut, and a guy on a horse can maybe take some shortcuts."

"_Forty_?" Mark as still stuck at the first fact. "And no seatbelts. No _steering_."

"Sure there is. You got reins."

"Yeah, but they aren't connected up very well. I mean, what kind of a system is that, sticking something in the horse's mouth and pulling on it? If I were a horse, I'd be pissed as hell."

"It not just the bit," Hardcastle pointed out. "You use your legs. How you sit. You're communicating with the horse."

"Yeah, but you hadn't even been introduced to that one, had you? You just jumped up on it and off you went. It was kinda like hotwiring a car."

"I was requisitioning necessary transportation to prevent the commission of a felony," Hardcastle said primly. "Anyway, like I told you, once you know how you never forget. Like a bicycle." He frowned and added, "How long had it been since you'd sat behind the wheel of a race car when Flip offered you the Coyote gig?"

"Three and a half years," Mark said tersely. Then he added, "No, you don't forget."

"And the 'Denco Special'—didn't look like you were having any trouble with that one . . . until they rigged your brakes, that is."

Mark muttered, "No, not much." His chin had dropped down onto his chest. He realized he was gritting his teeth a little. It was probably the fatigue of a long day of doing nothing. He always hated being a passenger. He searched for a change of subject and suddenly alighted on one.

"So, where'd you learn how to ride a horse? Arkansas, right? Back when you were a kid."

"Hah, not quite." Hardcastle let a quick smile escape. "We had mules there, not horses."

"What's the top speed on a mule?" Mark asked curiously.

Hardcastle seemed to ponder that for a moment and then finally said, "Not sure. I think the mules are too smart to let anybody find out."

"Oh. . . I guess I never thought of them as being _smart_."

"I think they get their smarts from their donkey sides," Hardcastle said smugly.

Mark ignored that and turned back to the original question. "So once you can ride one, you can ride the other, huh?"

"Well, that's what I thought, leastwise before I tested the theory. See, I came out here to California—I got a job and had a little scholarship money. The job petered out, though, and it was looking like I might have to pack up and go home."

"That was during the Depression?"

"Yeah. But then a friend of mine, a guy on the basketball team—I'd helped him out of a fix: tutored him a little poly sci on the side, got his grade point average up so he didn't get kicked off the team—he said he wanted to return the favor. His dad worked for a casting company."

"Like for the movies?"

"Yup. He said I could make some money as an extra, ten bucks a day, maybe even a little more if I had some special skills. And one thing they were always looking for was guys who could ride horses. I told him that was no problem."

"Four legs is four legs, you figured, right?" Mark asked with a grin.

"For ten bucks a day, regular, I woulda got up on a tiger."

"So don't tell me you wound up in a Lone Ranger movie."

"Nope," Hardcastle shook his head once and smiled. "Hopalong Cassidy—but I almost didn't survive the first day."

"They weren't using mules for the cattle drive, huh?"

"Nope. They put me up on a big bay. A bunch of us were supposed to come riding over a hill and straight at Cassidy and Johnny Nelson."

"That's his sidekick, right?"

"You've never seen a Hopalong Cassidy movie?" Hardcastle asked in disbelief.

Mark shook his head.

Hardcastle sighed again heavily and muttered, "Kids."

"Enough with my depraved youth, how'd your first day as an extra go?"

"Well, I wanted to make a good impression, right. Didn't want to be the last one over the hill, just poking along—and mules, well, they take a little starting up. Sometimes you have to _thump_ 'em."

"So you thumped the bay, eh?"

"Pretty much," Hardcastle admitted. "The damn thing took off like greased lightning. You'da thought he was auditioning to be Cassidy's new horse. There we were, tearing down the hill, me trying to keep my butt in the saddle, the director shouting—hell, _everybody_ was shouting—"

"That probably encouraged the horse some."

"You got that right. Anyway, didn't seem like there was anything that would _dis_courage that horse. I was just hanging on at that point. It musta had the bit in its teeth, and we were headed right toward the cameras."

"'I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille,'" Mark chortled.

"'Ex-College Boy Kills Seven in Movie Set Collision'—that's what I figured the headline was gonna say. Better me and the horse, I figured, so I threw my weight to the side, yanking on the reins. There was a lot less of me back then, but the horse took the hint. Down we went."

"Your movie career ended in one take."

"That's what I figured, when I finally realized out I was still alive. The horse was up—not even limping. He sure gave me a dirty look, though. So did the director. My leg was all banged up—the one the horse had fallen on—but nothing broken. William Boyd came over and asked me if I was okay."

"He played Cassidy, right?"

Hardcastle took his eyes of the highway just long enough to shoot him another disbelieving look.

"Yeah," he finally said. "He made close to seventy of those movies. A TV show, too. You've never seen any of them, huh?"

"No TV. Couldn't afford it. Look, I knew he had a sidekick; don't I get points for that?"

Hardcastle shook his head in disgust. "Anyway, I dusted myself off and waited for the director to get done hollering, then I walked over to the bay and climbed back on. I figured if I was gonna get my ten dollars, I needed to finish the whole day."

"There had to be an easier way to make ten bucks than that," Mark observed.

"Not then. No. I was just worried that they were going to kick me out, then and there, for not knowing what the hell I was doing, but somehow that director had got the notion that I'd been showboating—I'd planned the whole thing. And I heard the cameraman talking to him, saying he'd gotten a helluva good shot of me and the bay bearing right down on him. So I got sent back to the top of the hill and told to follow instructions from now on."

"There was a next time?"

"A whole bunch of them. They made three more movies that spring and summer. By the time classes started up again, I had enough for tuition _and_ books."

"And you knew how to ride a horse."

"Yup, never thumped that bay again, though."

"So how come you gave it up? Sounds like more fun than poly sci."

"Well, _nah_. It was fun enough to watch in a move theater or read in a comic book, but it wasn't real. Anyway, fall came, and then winter, and then Sunday morning--the seventh of December--we were listening to the radio and the announcer came on and said Pearl Harbor had been bombed. Everything changed after that."

"You volunteered?"

"Um-hmm. Army. I had some college behind me so they sent me to OCS—"

Mark's blank look garnered an explanation.

"Officer Candidate School. They weren't all that fussy about the 'gentleman' part. I guess they figured if you had a little schooling that was close enough."

"So you signed up for the cavalry?"

"Hah. No, kiddo. Infantry. More like 'assigned' than signing up for anything. Took a pay cut, though—second lieutenants didn't make ten dollars a day. Didn't break even till I was a captain.

Mark settled a little further back against the seat and tried to picture being willing to get shot at for less than ten dollars a day. After a moment he realized that, as there were roughly thirty days in a month and any one of them liable to include bad guys with guns, he understood the arrangement implicitly—also the part about being assigned duties.

He found he was grinning. Hardcastle glanced over at him with a inquiring expression. Mark didn't want to explain, and substituted another question of his own.

"So when you got back, did you do any more stunt riding?"

"Nah, all that movie stuff seemed kinda silly after that. Got a job with the LAPD and went back to school. Had the GI Bill then. Closest thing I came to riding was when I was assigned to a motorcycle unit."

"Now that _is_ like riding a bicycle."

"1600cc Harleys."

Mark smiled. "A bike that goes vroom."

Hardcastle didn't seem all that amused. His recollections seemed to have taken a sour turn. "I did miss it once in a while."

"The movies?"

"Good guys, bad guys. You know which is which and the good guys always win."

He sighed again, then suddenly straightened up with a squint of determination and one corner of his lips cocked up. "Tell you, though. You don't know what you've been missing all these years. When we get back we've gotta get you educated."

"Not poly sci. There's limits to your judicial authority, Hardcase—"

"Nah—I'm not talkin' about hitting the books. We've got to get you a dose of real Americana. You know they have a Hopalong Cassidy movie almost every weekend on that old movie channel . . . I can even show you my big entrance—"


End file.
